Chapter 8:
Stettler Flour Mills (1920-1949)
Seeking a career change, and seeing the opportunity for a flour mill, William Drewes moved his family to Spokane, Washington to take a 6 month course in flour milling. In the early spring of 1921, he returned to Stettler. He purchased a rooming house (built in 1906) on the southeast corner of Railway Avenue (51 Ave) and McNabb Street (49 St). The building was remodeled to become a flour mill and provide family living quarters. A 50-barrel Allis-Chalmers milling unit was installed. Flour milling started in March 1922.
Original Flour Mill
The Town of Stettler had its own electrical power plant at the time. The gradual expansion of home lighting had reduced the town’s original reserve capacity to produce power. The flour mill, with a high electrical demand, was forced to run in the early hours of the morning. Another new demand came when the motion picture theater turned on its carbon arc projector and brown-outs occurred. To solve the problem, William purchased an electric generator powered by a steam engine. It fed power into the mill and back into the town’s system.
Mill owner William Drewes between the Andersen brothers
The 1920’s were a period of prosperity. William was able to build a house on an acreage in east Stettler. In 1926, he started construction on a new larger flour mill and grain elevator complex on property he bought south of 49 Ave and on the west side of the CNR tracks. During construction of the mill, William accidentally fell off a scaffold and broke his hip. He spent months in a Calgary hospital healing and recuperating.
The CNR built a railroad spur to the mill to facilitate loading box cars with flour. When running a 24-hour shift, the mill could produce enough flour to fill a box car, which held about 300 sacks of flour that each weighed 100 pounds. The new mill also included a grain elevator to accumulate purchased wheat. To fill a box car with flour, 750 bushels of wheat was required, which was 10 to 12 horse-drawn wagon loads of wheat.
Standing between the mill house and elevator was a covered scale and grain dumping pit. Other additions included a large track-side warehouse to store flour. A smaller addition included an office and a storage shed for brand new flour sacks. Finally, on the north side of the driveway was a heavy concrete-walled power house with the steam engine powered dynamo. This unit was decommissioned in the 1930’s when Canadian Utilities was able to transmit electricity from their power plant at Drumheller.
The mill house included 2 Allis Chalmers milling units. As well, there was a burr grinder to provide custom preparation of livestock feed. In 1930, a truck was purchased to enable delivery of flour to stores in Central Alberta from Coronation to Rocky Mountain House.
Employees at the mill included William’s daughter Martha, who had taken a secretarial-bookkeeping course at Alberta College in 1930. Klaus Erichsen (my father) started working at the mill in October 1930. He had come to Canada from Germany as a 17-year-old with his uncle Carl Truelsen. Klaus worked at the mill until 1937, starting as a mill hand and working up to truck driver. Klaus and Martha were married in 1937 and they left the flour mill to take over farming with Martha’s uncle Henry Drewes.
Other employees at the mill included truck drivers/mill hands Chris Anderson and Basil Dunn, power plant operator Herman Elhorn, and mill hands Andy Andersen, the Askeland bros, George Drewes, Gilbert Hunt, Rudi Kuntsman, Pat Murphy, Bill Sturdy, and Julius Wildfang.
The man standing at the front of the truck is Klaus Erichsen
The Dirty Thirties exacted its toll. The need to mill flour stayed high, but the difficulty lay in trying to get paid for custom milling and flour sales. During the 1930's, farmers would bring wheat in and rather than sell it for the low prices, they would instead take back some of the flour for their own use. The number of men entering the military also impacted the available labor.
With the start of World War II and Great Britain’s need for wheat and flour from outside of Europe, the price of Canadian wheat shot up. The federal government set up the Canadian Wheat Board to control the price of wheat and its export. The board was given monopoly rights buying wheat and it was able to quickly lower the price. That was bad, sad news for farmers.
By 1945, William Drewes wanted to retire. His younger son Martin had completed his military service in the Royal Canadian Air Force. William and his wife moved to White Rock, BC and Martin took over the management and operation of the flour mill.
In the post-war era of 1945 to 1947, Europeans were facing hardship and starvation due to war-related destruction, . The governments of the United States and Canada developed programs to help supply food to the war-torn countries.
The mill obtained a government contract under this program to supply flour. While the contract lasted, the mill was profitable. But in the real world, things were different. First, the mill layout was labor intensive. Newer, larger mills were able to reduce staff by 50%. Adding to the issue, post-war wages had also increased. Government regulations reducing the weight of the sacks to 70 pounds or less increased the labor costs. Without a government subsidy, Stettler Flour Mills could not compete. So, in late 1947 the mill was shut down and put up for sale.
In the summer of 1948, William came back to Stettler for a summer holiday. I went with him to the mill, supposedly to repair any leaks in the office roof. In reality, it was Grandpa’s goodbye trip as we went through the mill. Later that year, he sold the mill to Mr. Halliday, Mr. Tucker, and Mr. Green of Donalda. In 1949 the buildings were moved to Donalda, and they began a new life as a feed mill.